I have been using AWS at work for over 3 years to varying degrees. While I feel comfortable using and administering most things, I realized it is time for me to get serious and fill the gaps in my knowledge. AWS has so many bells and whistles that it is daunting to think you can learn everything and keep that knowledge relevant when day-to-day you probably only use 5% of the features.

To fix these gaps, last month I started taking an AWS course on Udemy that will prepare me for one of the lower level AWS DevOps certifications. Due to distractions with kids and life happening, I am still at the beginning 10% of the course still going over the basics. I am using my main AWS account as a sandbox for trying things out in the course. Today my class got to the EC2 section, I realized that I have not been smart when it comes to saving money on my own AWS workloads. For the last 9 months, this blog has been running in AWS. I have been using On-Demand Pricing not a Reserved Instance. I can save 30% of the cost of the server by getting a reserved instance for a year and roughly 60% for 3 years. I plunked down the money to pay for 1 year.